Juan Pablo II College Chongoyape has got themself a promotion to the peruvian first division in football. In the decisive two-legged match in the play-offs of Peruvian second division the team named after polish pope John Paul II defeated in penalty shoot-out their rivals, Comerciantes. It is unfortunately not as beautiful history as it might be seen. It is, because in the unseen background there are defraudations of public money and other scandals on top of Peruvian Football Association.

The beginnings of Juan Pablo II College Chongoyape.

This club was formed relatively recently. The year of the foundation of this club is 2015. At the beginning they had been functioning near the local school in the city of Chongoyape that is named after the only polish pope. Not long after Agustin Lozano became interested in this team. This is a crucial name for the further part of this story, but we will get back to it later on. Throughout the years the team were getting promoted to the higher and higher levels of Peruvian football. Until the end of the previous year,when they got the opportunity to participate in the Peruvian Cup. These competitions are a form of the third division, and in those competitions the best teams from each district that are fighting for the promotion to the second division in the entire country participate to gain the possibility of advancing to the second division. Juan Pablo II was there as a debutante with the first season ahead.

Before the season started the decision was made to change the way of how the league and schedule look like. Instead of a classic system with a match and rematch, it was decided that there would be 2 groups, where most of the teams played for promotion, and the 3 worst teams were fighting for not getting relegated. Out of nowhere the association punished the two teams from Juan Pablo II College group. That was Union Huaral and Juan Aurich. Thanks to this situation only one of seven teams were not advancing to the next stage of the competition. The team from Chongoyape were 4th in this stage with fifteen points in twelve matches. It was at this time hard to assume that this team will have some serious chances of playing in the Peruvian first division. In the second round they did pretty well. At the end they won their group with nineteen points after ten games.

The decisive moment in the promotion battle.

First place allowed the Juan Pablo II College team to advance straight into the semi-finals, where there was promotion at stake. In this match the rival team was Comerciantes. In the first leg the team in white-yellow(the colors of Vatican City) shirts underperformed. Fortunately for them, they lost only by one goal difference in this game. The goal was scored by Maximiliano Lemos after the freekick. The team from Chongoyape were pretty lucky, that the result was only 1:0. The opposing team had a lot of great chances in which they weren’t able to score the goal.

In the rematch at their own stadium Juan Pablo II College were leading the game. In the eighteenth minute of the game Facundo Rodriguez scored the first goal for the home team. Although the goal was scored from an offside, it couldn’t be ruled out, because there was no VAR system in this competition. That way the result in this double-legged match was now even. At the beginning of the second half, Juan Pablo II College scored the second goal, and took the lead in this clash. It was revealed after the replay, that second goal for the home team also should be disallowed, because before the penalty-taker touched the ball, his teammates were already in the penalty area, and that is not allowed when it comes to penalties. Not long after Comerciantes scored their first goal in the rematch and evened once again the result. Although they were trying really had, the home team were unable to score the third goal to secure promotion. Therefore there had to be penalty-shootout to define who will get promoted to the Peruvian first division. After two missed penalties by the guest team and only one missed by the home team, after all Juan Pablo II got a long awaited promotion.

Who exactly is the person that is in charge of this team? 

Now, when we presented how they are doing in terms of sports achievements, it is the time to sneak a little peak at what is going on behind closed doors. For this reason it is time to go back to the character of Agustin Lozano. Who he exactly is and what he has in common with this team and the city they are from. He was the mayor of the hometown of this team until 2018. It is a relatively small town with about 20 thousand people. After that he became the CEO of the Peruvian Football Association. Despite having such an important position he was continuously supporting the team from his town. He is still the owner of the club, while his wife is the CEO there.

In September of 2022 the Attorney General Office has started an investigation against Agustin Lozano for illegal enrichment to the detriment of the country of Peru as a mayor of Chongoyape district. According to some documents Lozano bought with help of public money, among others forty hectares of plot, where he built a farm for his parents. He also bought a car worth 24 thousands dollars, 2 local radio stations and… a football team. The list of things he bought, while probably using public money, is much longer, but one of the more interesting things on that list is a tool shop. This store is bought on behalf of one of the Peruvian football referees.

Later on in December of 2022 he was accused by the CEO of the Peruvian first division of leading an organized criminal group. This group was supposed to force teams from this division to take over TV rights “offered” by this criminal group for the competition. Agustin Lozano was said to threaten them with excluding their teams from the international competition on the strength of the statute of the Association, which was said to be written down illegally. The Association answered the charges brought against them, and said that all of their actions were consulted with FIFA and also CONMEBOL.

The attitude towards Lozano’s scandals.

What is the attitude in the club to these scandals we can all read in the recently published statement of the club: “We are calling on the press to take responsibility for what they were saying and writing about our club Juan Pablo II College Chongoyape and the people in charge of this club. We are very clear about the position of neutrality that FPF President Agustin Lozano Saavedra has maintained, acting correctly and accordingly. Whatsmore, it is worth mentioning that family bonds do not represent a conflict of interest observed by the authorities. It is a natural situation, because all of the leaders with relevant positions come from clubs and invest in football. This is how a managerial career is carried out in Peru and worldwide.”

We can be sure about one thing. The team from Chongoyape won’t be well taken by the supporters of the other team in the top division. Nowadays there are already a lot of people in social media who are against the “papal” team. They are referring to the day of the promotion of Juan Pablo II College as the sadest day in Peruvian football. They are grieving that the name of such an important person as the polish pope is used as a cover for realisation of ambition of Agustin Lozano and his wife, Offelinda Correa’s.